


Supermarket Flowers [The Flash Reborn]

by americanchemicals



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Episode: s04e01 The Flash Reborn, Established Relationship, M/M, Nightmares, Speed Force, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-11
Updated: 2017-12-09
Packaged: 2019-01-31 18:37:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12687921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/americanchemicals/pseuds/americanchemicals
Summary: When Barry comes back from the speed force, he's not quite the same. Will Oliver be able to help him return to his original self?





	1. Chapter 1

Team Flash had lost contact with Oliver Queen shortly after Barry had gone into the speed force. He had returned to Star City and resumed his duties as mayor and as the Green Arrow, and pulled a traditional Oliver and repressed all his emotions and pushed all his friends away. Occasionally, Iris would try to reach out to him, but she was always met with a voicemail. When she called the mayor's office directly, she would be told that "Mr. Queen is out right now, but I'll be sure that he gets your message and calls you back." He never did.

So when the Samuroid showed up and demanded that they "bring him the Flash," there was the debate if they should bring Oliver into this.

"If we don't offer up the Flash, there's going to be some serious damage. People are going to die and it's going to be on us," Cisco pointed out, trying to get the rest of Team Flash to agree with him. Iris, Wally, and Joe all looked at him incredulously as he explained that he had been working on a way to remove Barry from the speed force while keeping it stabilized. When he brought up that he had consulted others on his calculations, Iris interrupted him.

"Wait, you talked to Felicity about this? Does Oliver know?" Her tone was almost accusatory.

"Well, no, because I was afraid if I told him what I was trying to do he would literally put an arrow in me."

"Obviously! We've all been mourning his absence for months, we couldn't even have a proper funeral! And the Green Arrow has become increasingly violent, for the past six months, while also pushing every one of his friends away. Do you know how hurt he must be feeling? If you want to try to bring Barry back, I think you should ask him for his consent," Iris stated, crossing her arms.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. You want him to ask for Oliver's consent so that we can save Central City? Oliver may have dated Barry, but this is thousands of lives that we're talking about here," Wally cut in.

"I'm going to have to agree with Iris here. Or at least, just let Oliver know what you want to do. He doesn't deserve to be blindsided if suddenly Barry is back," Joe added his opinion, trying to meet the two siblings in the middle.

"And what if it doesn't work? Do you want to give Oliver false hope?" Wally cut in again, obviously not happy with that idea.

"Guys, I've checked these calculations over and over again. It should work. It has to." Cisco had spent countless hours going over everything, making sure it was perfect before even considering introducing it to the team.

Eventually, they all agreed to try reaching out to Oliver, which was not easy. They left a voicemail on his phone, hoping he would get it, and then reached out to Felicity to make sure that he didn't just delete it and actually listened.

-

Within the hour, it became pretty clear what Oliver's stance on the matter was. The man had stormed into Star Labs, and armed, for that matter. He slammed his bow down on the desk, and turned towards the group standing around.

"You are not going to try to bring him back. You can't mess with this stuff, bringing people back from the dead only brings problems. Don't believe me? The last time-"

Felicity ran in behind him, placing a hand on his shoulder, causing him to stop mid-sentence.

"Oliver, we don't know for sure if he's actually dead. He's entered the speed force before and come out just fine," she reminded him softly.

"It's been six months. He's gone, and he's not coming back. I'll help you with this samurai, and then we can go our separate ways. That's the end of this discussion." Oliver picked his bow back off and grumpily left the cortex, and Felicity sighed as they watched him go off to some other part of the lab.

"He's been taking this whole thing pretty hard, if you couldn't already tell," she gestured, "but I'm not here to handle his temper tantrums. What else do we need to do to bring Barry back, Cisco?"


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They manage to bring Barry back, but he's not quite the same.

Cisco, Felicity, and now  _Caitlin_ stayed up late finalizing the calculations and modifications on the Speed Force bazooka and the Quark Sphere. As they stood around at the runway, accompanied by the West family, the anxiety and excitement in the air was palpable, and it only put people more on edge. No one had dared said a word to Oliver about what they were trying to do, and instead had told him that they were all going out for lunch, because they knew he would decline to go with. 

As the  _System Failure_ came on-screen, it was like losing Barry all over again. 

What they didn't expect, was to soon after receive a call from Cecile that he had been picked up by the state police. 

On the car ride to the precinct, Felicity braved a call Oliver. 

"Hey Oliver, before you say anything, Barry's alive and at the precinct and we're on our way there so you should probably head..." Felicity pulled the phone from her face, eyebrows raised, and said, "he hung up on me without saying anything. Can't tell if that's a good or bad sign."

They arrived at roughly the same time, but when Cecile told them to prepare themselves, Oliver visibly tensed, muttering an "I told you so," to them under his breath. 

Barry was sat on the floor of the large room, strange symbols doodled methodically throughout. Oliver moved close to him, still leaving a considerable amount of space, and crouched down next to him. 

"Bear, hey," he said, but his voice was barely above a whisper. Everyone else was still stood close to the doorway frozen, not wanting to intrude on the two but at the same time wanting to get close to their friend that they had thought they may never see again. 

He smiled widely at Oliver, scooting closer to him, before his expression fell grim and he said, "Nora shouldn't be here."

"Nora's not here, Barry, it's your friends," Iris replied nervously, but still putting a smile on her face.

Barry stood, and Oliver shot up, like it was a knee-jerk reaction.

"Your Honor, I didn't do this. I didn't kill anyone," he said to Cecile, before turning quickly back to Oliver.

"Can you hear the stars singing? Rhyming, chiming, timing every hour, every minute," he nearly shouted, gripping his hair tightly, and Oliver's smile faltered. 

Barry kept going on with more gibberish, and Oliver placed his hands on the young man's shoulders.

"Barry, it's me, Ollie," he spoke to him again, and this time it was almost like Barry heard him. He stopped talking, and smiled back at the vigilante, but the facade was broken as he gave a line about how the stars were melting like ice cream. Nothing was making sense, and the symbols didn't make any sense, and Oliver's heart was breaking all over again. He didn't know what was better or worse, having Barry gone but having the memory of him, or having him alive but only as the shell of the man that he once was. 

Oliver tuned out as Barry jumped away from his grip and started going on about physics, rhyming random words. He felt numb, he didn't know how to react. Barry's scream caused him to jump a bit, but he still stood frozen in place as he stared at the man that he loved. 

 "I'm just not sure I'm like you, Oliver." 

Caitlin was offering up explanations about how this was probably neurological, and the others were talking with her while Barry went on, but Oliver felt like crying. Some of the stuff he was saying reflected that he had memories of the people from his life, but at the same time, he was in this room with them and not acknowledging them. It was like a broken record, sputtering out things here and there, and Oliver was grasping at the things with the slightest semblance to the Barry he knew. 

When they knocked him out with the sedative, Oliver carried Barry to the car and then through the lab. He stayed at Barry's side immobile while the others talked about what could be wrong with him. 

Waking him up again, Oliver ran a hand through Barry's hair tentatively, like a scared kid reaching out. When things went the exact same way as before, Barry speaking fragmented nonsense and spilling out rhymes, Oliver left the cortex. He went to the speed lab, punched the wall, and actually cried. No one came after him, unsurprisingly, and once he pulled himself back together he asked to have the room alone with Barry. 

"Barry. I don't know if you're in there, or if these symbols actually mean anything... Please come back to me, Bear. It's been so hard without you, and when I lost you it was like losing the only thing pure left in my life. I know I've never deserved someone as happy and determined like you in my life, but no one has ever seen the good in me like you do. I've never loved someone as much as I love you, and that scares the crap out of me. When you left, it was like the universe was punishing me all over again... It hurts so much to see you like this. You never deserved all this burden in your life, it's always crushed me to see you so stressed from carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders. If you're in there at all, please come back to me. I can't lose you again, please."

As he ended his monologue, lightning appeared in Barry's eyes and the speedster began vibrating, before zooming around the cortex. He knocked Wally over and caused quite a bit of damage before Caitlin managed to stop him. Oliver felt the numbness spread all over him again, and as he helped carry Barry over to a containment cell in the pipeline it only intensified. 

When the samurai came back, Oliver geared up to help Wally and Cisco catch him. It took quite a lot of effort to take him down, but it definitely helped that it was blindsided by the Green Arrow being there. When they found out the thing wasn't even human, Cisco generously named it the samuroid, but all Oliver cared about was getting back to Barry.

-

The computer algorithm Cisco made was getting nothing on the symbols that Barry had scribbled all over the place. He had gotten everyone's hopes up for a second, but the phrase that came out of the computer's translation was a phrase that Oliver had never heard Barry utter a single day in his life. 

"This house is bitchin'." 

He went back to sitting near his cell in the pipeline (or as Felicity said, 'moping'), silently observing as Joe came in and shaved him. Joe talked to Barry and even tried to start a conversation with Oliver when that didn't go to plan, but Oliver just sat and stared straight at Barry. Joe figured that if things kept going on like this eventually the vigilante would drive himself just as crazy as his son. 

 


	3. Chapter 3

Days went by with little progress. Oliver remained practically immobile by Barry's side, refusing to leave the scarlet speedster alone. Team Flash became increasingly concerned over his lack of sleep and appetite, but Felicity reassured them that he had been like this before and been fine. 

"Oliver, I brought you some water." Iris smiled as she placed the bottle near him, but the vigilante barely acknowledged her. She left the pipeline and returned to the cortex, where the team was gathered trying to formulate different solutions. 

"Well maybe it's like that time that he lost his memory. We could electroshock his brain to stimulate the temporal lobe and then provide a visceral memory like we did before, and maybe then he'll remember," Cisco said, using his hands to emphasize his statement. 

"Before you caused that with a magnetic disruption, how do you know that that'll work a second time around? We have no idea what caused this, we barely understand how the Speed Force internally operates. We can understand it's molecular and energy levels, but it's something that's alive and manipulative. It did something to Barry, and we need to be careful about doing anything significant. What if shocking him to that magnitude makes it worse?" Caitlin countered warily. 

"You also need to remember that Oliver will probably put an arrow in anyone who tries to harm Barry in the slightest right now. If we electrocute him and make him worse who's to say that he won't go and brutally kill every one of us?" Wally crossed his arms, his tone slightly joking but his message quite serious. 

"Yeah, I don't think Oliver would be okay with us experimenting on Barry period," Felicity said. 

"He wants Barry to get better, doesn't he?" Iris asked angrily. 

"Oliver's also lost a lot of people. When Barry went into the Speed Force he was a mess, and I don't think he's any better now. Of course he wants Barry to get better, he just doesn't want to risk making anything worse than it already is at this point," Felicity answered. 

All the sudden, an alert message popped up on the computer screen, signalling that Barry's cell door had been opened manually. 

"Seriously?" Cisco threw his hands up in exasperation, "Does he know how long it took to clean up the mess Barry made speeding around like crazy?"

"At least you didn't get thrown into a glass divider," Wally countered. 

-

Inside the pipeline, Oliver had had enough. Barry had drawn the symbols all over the cell until he had run out of space, and then begun to ramble on about the stars. Oliver straight up decided that he had no idea why his life had to be this way, he didn't understand why he couldn't have just one good thing in his life that stayed good. He had done a lot of bad things, but in the end all he had wanted was to be happy.

When he had been with Barry, before, he had been so happy. Barry was like sunshine personified, he could walk into the room in the most dire of situations and Oliver's mood would instantly be lifted. At first, he had been reluctant to start a relationship with the younger man, mostly because he didn't want to be burdensome. If it wasn't for Barry being almost annoyingly persistent in pursuing him, as well as both their respective teams pushing them together, they definitely would not have been a thing. It also took a bit for Joe West to get accustomed to Oliver Queen dating his adoptive son, but once he saw how happy Barry was when they were together he learned to accept them as a couple. 

When Savitar became an ever-present threat, and his destiny was to kill Iris, Barry became increasingly stressed. Oliver longed for the days when his sunshine would shine the brightest, but he always seemed tired and dull during those months. They spoke less and it was harder to squeeze in times to visit each other, especially when Barry wouldn't make the run over to Star City (it was hard for Oliver to do the commute when he had his duties as mayor). He had been there that night, that awful night, to be moral support for Barry. 

When Barry walked into the Speed Force, both Joe and Wally had to restrain him. He screamed and fought, not wanting to give him up, and all he had gotten in response was a sad smile and an "I love you." 

He would say how he wished that he could take Barry's place, and then be brutally reminded that he wasn't a speedster and couldn't. He almost wished for Wally to be there instead, because at least if that was the case he would still have his Bear with him (even if he was stressed with saving his younger brother). 

Opening the door, Oliver went into the cell with Barry, sitting down beside him. After a few moments, the door closed again, and Oliver rested his head against one of the padded walls. 

"I blamed myself, mostly, for letting you walk into the Speed Force. I feel like I should've been there for you more when you were dealing with Savitar. You were always on my mind, I was always worried about you, and yet I feel that you felt like I was downplaying the severity of the situation. I just wish that you've would've asked me to stay. I know it's selfish to say that, because I should've anyways, but if you had asked I would've. I never want to leave your side ever again, especially not like this. Even if you stay like this forever, I'll still stay, because I love you. I don't think I've ever loved someone as much as I love you, not to mention how long. You're basically the only person who's ever stuck around this long, and that's a miracle within itself, that I haven't driven you away yet." 

Barry hadn't looked at him for most of the one-sided conversation, instead tracing his finger over the symbols he had scribbled onto the glass. When Oliver finished speaking, he placed a hand on the speedster's shoulder, testing the waters. When Barry didn't flinch away, he pulled the younger man closer, setting him on his lap and wrapping his arms around his torso. Barry didn't protest, he instead chose to stare at Oliver's face curiously. 

"I was going to ask you to marry me, you know. I still would, if you weren't like this," he whispered, kissing the brunette's forehead. Resting against the wall, Oliver fell asleep, while Barry continued to stare. 

 


	4. For the First Time

"It's kinda adorable," Felicity muttered, and no one could really disagree with her.

"Yeah, for once Oliver doesn't look like a super-serious killing machine," Wally commented, and Iris smacked his arm. 

They had all gathered around in the pipeline, watching Oliver and Barry sleep entangled together. Oliver had propped his body to be seated up against the wall, and Barry was straddling his lap, head resting against the archer's shoulder as he slept. They had been like this for a few hours, but the team had only recently come down to check on them to make sure that everything was okay. It was a pretty cute sight, especially with Oliver's arms protectively wrapped around the speedster. 

"It is getting pretty late, we all should head out," Joe said, and they all silently agreed, dispersing from the space. Breaking into smaller conversations, they didn't notice Oliver's face break into a grimace, the first sign that things were about to go downhill. Within ten minutes, they had all left the Labs, obliviously to the legitimate nightmare that was about to break out.

-

Oliver's PTSD was something that he never got rid of. He never really sought out medication or psychotherapy, instead choosing to relieve any stress he had by shooting arrows into people. When nightmares would wake him up at night, he wouldn't try to go back to sleep again, instead trying to drown the pain by going to the foundry and practicing his combat skills or doing the salmon ladder until his shoulders and arms were screaming at him to stop. And it took a lot for his muscles to get exhausted to that point. 

A lot of that changed once Barry and him started dating. The first time he had a nightmare, he had cried out in his sleep, and Barry had woken him up immediately, never letting the nightmare itself progress to the point where it would scare Oliver awake. The older man had attempted to leave, apologizing for his behavior, but Barry had pulled him back into the bed. Insisting that Oliver didn't have to talk about it if he didn't want to, but could, Barry cuddled close to him and rubbed soothing circles onto his back. It had been a long time since someone had been so gentle with him, and Oliver melted into the touch. That first night, he hadn't told Barry about the nightmares, but eventually he opened up to his boyfriend. Eventually, over the course of a few months, it got to the point where Oliver could lay beside Barry at night and guarantee that he wouldn't have a night terror. His presence alone calmed something in his psyche, and it was some of the best sleep Oliver had had in years.

When Barry went into the speed force, that all changed. The nightmares came back with full force, and then some. It became impossible to ever get a good night's sleep, so Oliver would stay awake for days, until it got to the point where he was so exhausted that his body would knock him out involuntarily, until he was awoken a few hours later by another bad dream. 

So when he fell asleep in the pipeline, he didn't think that another nightmare would hit him. Barry was back, and he was always the topic of his night terrors, so why would Oliver panic if his boyfriend was right there with him?

-

By as Oliver dreamed, images of Barry bleeding out on the floor, images of Barry being tortured mercilessly, plagued the archer with intense severity. He could never save his dream Barry, always failing to stop the pain. 

Oliver screamed, in real time, and it startled Barry awake. The grip around him tightened immensely, fingers digging so hard into his back that they probably drew blood. The scream was blood curdling, so loud that Barry's ears rang a bit. 

 _"Barry!"_ Oliver shouted, tears leaking down his face fervently.

Barry didn't like the shouting, or the iron-grip he was being held in, and pushed at Oliver's chest, trying to break free. At the motion, Oliver's eyes snapped open, and in his sleep-groggy brain he forgot where he was, thinking that it was just a normal night of Barry waking him up from a bad dream. He pulled Barry into a kiss, the taste salty from all the tears. When he pulled away, he remembered that they were in the pipeline, and a fresh set of tears began to fall.

"I'm sorry, Barry. Y-you don't even know who I am, and I'm sorry," he apologized, closing his eyes and resting his head against Barry's shoulder. Unaware that the younger man had reached up and gently traced his lips with his fingers, replaying the kiss in his head. Something in his brain snapped at that moment, violently throwing him back into reality.

"Why are you crying?" he asked instantaneously, and Oliver kept sobbing.

"Because this isn't real. You're never coming back to me, and I was stupid to think that you would. I don't deserve to be happy, that's just the universe's plan for me in the end," the archer replied, face still buried in Barry's shoulder.

"Ollie, what are you talking about? Out of all the people I know, you deserve the most happiness in your life, especially with everything that you've had to go through-" 

Oliver cut him off, his head shooting up, staring intently into Barry's eyes.

"Is this real?" 

"What do you mean, is this real?" Barry replied, confused.

"Am I dreaming?" Oliver reached up, ready to smack himself in the face, when Barry's hand shot up to stop him. 

"You're not dreaming, babe, what's going on?" 

Barry didn't get a response to his question, because Oliver attacked him with his lips again, which Barry didn't really mind, responding with equal amounts of passion.

All of the sudden, the pipeline door hissed open, but both were too lost in each other to notice. 

"Yo!" Cisco yelled, and the two broke apart, turning their attention to the small crowd of Joe, Iris, and Cisco that had gathered. All three were looking at the two expectedly, but Barry was still confused as to what was 100% happening right now.

Oliver stood suddenly, and Barry thought he was going to get dropped on his ass, but Oliver had re-positioned his hands so that he was effortlessly holding his boyfriend up. Only Barry seemed to realize how compromising the position was, especially with his adoptive father in the room, and he buried his face in the crook of Ollie's neck, because it was probably more scarlet than his suit at this point. He missing the giant grin breaking out across his boyfriend's face, which in turn made everything else in the room smile just as wide. He walked them both out of the cell, and tapped Barry's lower back, signalling for him to drop his legs, which he did instinctively. 

"I don't even want to know how you two are that coordinated with each other," Cisco commented, and Barry turned his head in time to see Joe's eyebrows raise so far they almost went into his hairline. 

"Cisco!" he cried, feeling his ears and cheeks burning with embarrassment. Ollie laughed in his ear, wrapping his arms around his waist, and he leaned into the touch. 

"What does he remember?" Iris asked, breaking the moment, and addressing the question to Oliver, almost as if Barry wasn't in the room.

"He's back," the archer laughed, pressing a kiss to Barry's hair. He had never been this affectionate with him while other people were in the room, and he still felt like he was burning under all their gazes. 

-

"So you don't remember anything after entering the speed force?" Cisco asked, and Barry shook his head in response.

"The only thing I remember after that is, well, kissing Oliver." He blushed again when he said this, and felt Oliver's grip around his waist tighten in the slightest. He was seated next to him in the medical bay, and now Caitlin, Wally, and Felicity had joined the small crowd surrounding the couple. 

"You're basically Sleeping Beauty," Felicity gushed, and Barry ducked his head to hide how much he grinned at that statement. 

"Well, all your vitals are fine, and the scans don't show any damage anywhere in your body. I suggest that you just go home and get a good night's rest," Caitlin recommended, typing something on her tablet. 

"If Oliver even lets you do that," Cisco mumbled, and Joe sent daggers with the look that he gave him. 

"Right now, I'm just really hungry," Barry replied, trying to calm down his raging embarrassment, but his brother decided torturing him would be even better.

"For Oliver's dick," Wally said, and Cisco and him high-fived before running away, with Joe looking murderous. 

"I want to die," Barry groaned. 

"Welcome back," Iris joked, but meaning it seriously at the same time.

"Let's go get you some food. Big Belly Burger sound good?" Ollie asked, and Barry had never loved him more. 

 


End file.
